Swine dysentery is a significant endemic disease of pigs in Australia and worldwide. Swine dysentery is a contagious mucohaemorrhagic diarrhoeal disease, characterised by extensive inflammation and necrosis of the epithelial surface of the large intestine. Economic losses due to swine dysentery result mainly from growth retardation, costs of medication and mortality. The causative agent of swine dysentery was first identified as an anaerobic spirochaete (Treponema hyodysenteriae) in 1971, and was recently reassigned to the genus Brachyspira as B. hyodysenteriae. Where swine dysentery is established in a piggery, the disease spectrum can vary from being mild, transient or unapparent, to being severe and even fatal. Medication strategies on individual piggeries may mask clinical signs and on some piggeries the disease may go unnoticed, or may only be suspected. Whether or not obvious disease occurs, B. hyodysenteriae may persist in infected pigs, or in other reservoir hosts such as rodents, or in the environment. All these sources pose potential for transmission of the disease to uninfected herds. Commercial poultry may also be colonized by B. hyodysenteriae, although it is not clear how commonly this occurs under field conditions.
Colonisation by B. hyodysenteriae elicits a strong immunological response against the spirochaete, hence indirect evidence of exposure to the spirochaete can be obtained by measuring circulating antibody titres in the blood of infected animals. These antibody titres have been reported to be maintained at low levels, even in animals that have recovered from swine dysentery. Serological tests for detection of antibodies therefore have considerable potential for detecting subclinical infections and recovered carrier pigs that have undetectable numbers of spirochaetes in their large intestines. These tests would be particularly valuable in an easy to use kit form, such as an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. A variety of techniques have been developed to demonstrate the presence of circulating antibodies against B. hyodysenteriae, including indirect fluorescent antibody tests, haemagglutination tests, microtitration agglutination tests, complement fixation tests, and ELISA using either lipopolysaccharide or whole sonicated spirochaetes as antigen. All these tests have suffered from problems of specificity, as related non-pathogenic intestinal spirochaetes can induce cross-reactive antibodies. These tests are useful for detecting herds where there is obvious disease and high circulating antibody titres, but they are problematic for identifying sub-clinically infected herds and individual infected pigs. Consequently, to date, no completely sensitive and specific assays are available for the detection of antibodies against B. hyodysenteriae. The lack of suitable diagnostic tests has hampered control of swine dysentery.
A number of methods are employed to control swine dysentery, varying from the prophylactic use of antimicrobial agents, to complete destocking of infected herds and prevention of re-entry of infected carrier pigs. All these options are expensive and, if they are to be fully effective, they require the use of sophisticated diagnostic tests to monitor progress. Currently, detection of swine dysentery in herds with sub-clinical infections, and individual healthy carrier animals, remains a major problem and is hampering implementation of effective control measures. A definitive diagnosis of swine dysentery traditionally has required the isolation and identification of B. hyodysenteriae from the faeces or mucosa of diseased pigs. Major problems involved include the slow growth and fastidious nutritional requirements of these anaerobic bacteria and confusion due to the presence of morphologically similar spirochaetes in the normal flora of the pig intestine. A significant improvement in the diagnosis of individual affected pigs was achieved with the development of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays for the detection of spirochaetes from faeces. Unfortunately in practical applications the limit of detection of PCRs rendered it unable to detect carrier animals with subclinical infections. As a consequence of these diagnostic problems, there is a clear need to develop a simple and effective diagnostic tool capable of detecting B. hyodysenteriae infection at the herd and individual pig level.
A strong immunological response is induced against the spirochaete following colonization with B. hyodysenteriae, and pigs recovered from swine dysentery are protected from re-infection. Despite this, attempts to develop vaccines to control swine dysentery have met with very limited success, either because they have provided inadequate protection on a herd basis, or they have been too costly and difficult to produce to make them commercially viable. Bacterin vaccines provide some level of protection, but they tend to be lipopolysaccharide serogroup-specific, which then requires the use of multivalent bacterins. Furthermore they are difficult and costly to produce on a large scale because of the fastidious anaerobic growth requirements of the spirochaete.
Several attempts have been made to develop attenuated live vaccines for swine dysentery. This approach has the disadvantage that attenuated strains show reduced colonisation, and hence cause reduced immune stimulation. There also is reluctance on the part of producers and veterinarians to use live vaccines for swine dysentery because of the possibility of reversion to virulence, especially as very little is known about genetic regulation and organization in B. hyodysenteriae. 
The use of recombinant subunit vaccines is an attractive alternative, since the products would be well-defined (essential for registration purposes), and relatively easy to produce on a large scale. To date the first reported use of a recombinant protein from B. hyodysenteriae as a vaccine candidate (a 38-kilodalton flagellar protein) failed to prevent colonisation in pigs. This failure is likely to relate specifically to the particular recombinant protein used, as well as to other more down-stream issues of delivery systems and routes, dose rates, choice of adjuvants etc. (Gabe, J D, Chang, R J, Slomiany, R, Andrews, W H and McCaman, M T (1995) Isolation of extracytoplasmic proteins from Serpulina hyodysenteriae B204 and molecular cloning of the flaB1 gene encoding a 38-kilodalton flagellar protein. Infection and Immunity 63:142-148). The first reported partially protective recombinant B. hyodysenteriae protein used for vaccination was a 29.7 kDa outer membrane lipoprotein (Bhlp29.7, also referred to as BmpB and BlpA) which had homology with the methionine-binding lipoproteins of various pathogenic bacteria. The use of the his-tagged recombinant Bhlp29.7 protein for vaccination of pigs, followed by experimental challenge with B. hyodysenteriae, resulted in 17-40% of vaccinated pigs developing disease compared to 50-70% of the unvaccinated control pigs developing disease. Since the incidence of disease for the Bhlp29.7 vaccinated pigs was significantly (P=0.047) less than for the control pigs, Bhlp29.7 appeared to have potential as a swine dysentery vaccine component (La, T, Phillips, N D, Reichel, M P and Hampson, D J (2004). Protection of pigs from swine dysentery by vaccination with recombinant BmpB, a 29.7 kDa outer-membrane lipoprotein of Brachyspira hyodysenteriae. Veterinary Microbiology 102:97-109). A number of other attempts have been made to identify outer envelop proteins from B. hyodysenteriae that could be used as recombinant vaccine components, but again no successful vaccine has yet been made. A much more global approach is needed to the identification of potentially useful immunogenic recombinant proteins from B. hyodysenteriae is needed.
To date, only one study using DNA for vaccination has been reported. In this study, the B. hyodysenteriae ftnA gene, encoding a putative ferritin, was cloned into an E. coli plasmid and the plasmid DNA used to coat gold beads for ballistic vaccination. A murine model for swine dysentery was used to determine the protective nature of vaccination with DNA and/or recombinant protein. Vaccination with recombinant protein induced a good systemic response against ferritin however vaccination with DNA induced only a detectable systemic response. Vaccination with DNA followed a boost with recombinant protein induced a systemic immune response to ferritin only after boosting with protein. However, none of the vaccination regimes tested was able to provide the mice with protection against B. hyodysenteriae colonisation and the associated lesions. Interestingly, vaccination of the mice with DNA alone resulted in significant exacerbation of disease (Davis, A. J., Smith, S. C. and Moore, R. J. (2005). The Brachyspira hyodysenteriae ftnA gene: DNA vaccination and real-time PCR quantification of bacteria in a mouse model of disease. Current Microbiology 50: 285-291).